"Martin," said she, "I don't doubt in the least that what you have said to me about yourself is true. You are as good as other people, although you do happen now to be a guide, and perhaps after a while you may be very well off; but for all that you are a guide, and you are in Mr. Sadler's employment, and Mr. Sadler's rights and powers are just like gas escaping from a pipe: they are everywhere from cellar to garret, so to speak, and you couldn't escape them. It would be a bad, bad thing for you, Martin, if he were to hear that you make propositions of the kind you have made to the ladies that he pays you to take out into the woods to guide and to protect." Martin was on the point of a violent expostulation, but she stopped him. "Now I know what you are going to say," she exclaimed, "but it isn't of any use. You are in his employment, and you are bound to honor and to respect him; that is the way a guide can show himself to be a gentleman." "But suppose," said Martin, quickly, "that he, knowing my family as he does, should think I had done wisely in speaking to you." A cloud came over her brow. It annoyed her that he should thus parry her thrust. "Well, you can ask him," she said, abruptly; "and if he doesn't object, you can go to see my mother, when she gets home, and ask her. And here comes Mr. Matlack. I think he has been calling you. Now don't say another word, unless it is about fish." But Matlack did not come; he stopped and called, and Martin went to him. Margery walked languidly towards the woods and sat down on the projecting root of a large tree. Then leaning back against the trunk, she sighed. "It is a perfectly dreadful thing to be a girl," she said; "but I am glad I did not speak to him as I did to Mr. Raybold. I believe he would have jumped into the lake." CHAPTER XXI THE INDIVIDUALITY OF PETER SADLER "Martin," said Matlack, sharply, before the young man had reached him, "it seems to me that you think that you have been engaged here as lady's-maid, but there's other things to do besides teaching young women about trees and fishes. If you think," continued Matlack, when the two had reached the woodland kitchen, "that your bein' a hermit is goin' to let you throw all the work on me, you're mistaken. There's a lot of potatoes that's got to be peeled for dinner."